One eye is swollen shut. The other stares out. She can’t discern anything with one working eye. Each breath brings pain and she can feel the nakedness of her body. Something thick and sick is stuffed into her mouth. Her hand tries to go to this object (the object is foreign) and finds itself bound with the other behind her. Tears begin to slide out of her good eye and collect in a pool on the bridge of her nose. She strains that eye to see more but it is dark. Dark all around.

She thrashes, growls then drifts.

My thumb is up. I’ve been walking for miles and now it’s raining. My thumb is up. I just need a ride into the next town. I‘ll get a room. Clean up, write, sleep.

There is a shape darker than everything else, a monster. It speaks like a man. “You awake? I‘ve been waitin for ya.”

She shuts her eye. “Uh-uh-uh-” the shape says. “Too late, sugar.” Her bladder drains warm and stinging over her thighs. The shape grows, and she can make out a moustache, thin like scribbles over a hole. She is overwhelmed by the odor of sweetrot. She knows what’s coming in her pussy. It’s burning there. Her eye tightens. It burns.

Oh thank, God. He looks okay. Hicky but harmless.

“Where you headin?”

“To Creekville. Thank you so much.”

“Dint anybody ever tell ya hitchhiking is dangerous, sugar.”

“Well, I’m doing this whole ‘On The Road’ type of thing.” He’s probably never even heard of Kerouac. “You know- traveling, wandering, and writing down poems and stories about my experiences.”

She feels the heat near her skin- the back of her thigh. She grunts, grunts, struggles. The monster bites down. The monster pushes the heat into her flesh. She screams into the gag, her body goes rigid.

April 27 2000Because I loved your words and followedAbraham is dead
So is his god
And so are youInstead the devil lives
He drives a dusty red pickup
Smokes women like “sugar”And now I’m dead too
-K. B.

There are things that live in this world because they are able to thrive absent of light or able to feast on waste. The shock of their very existence challenges our concepts of what we deserve to receive and what we deserve to take. Violence is one of those things.